Comments on: Skillwalls not paywalls

By: Andy Dickinson (@digidickinson)

Andy Dickinson (@digidickinson) — Thu, 12 May 2011 14:19:59 +0000

@cecook …working out the techie things like data because majority of audience won’t http://t.co/9pNcA4x

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:41:06 +0000

Thanks for stopping by Stijn.

I take your point but you can’t have link journalism and digests if you don’t have a strategy to find, collate and manage links and information. That means things like RSS and social and web search. Not a skill. But using pipes to mash that up and filter it to manage the flow is and that might mean that you have a better quality raw material to apply whatever selection criteria you want.

I agree it its only part of the equation, as I said it isn’t exclusive or all encompassing, but it adds an element to the debate that is missing – an idea of what sets a journalist (not a newspaper or broadcaster) apart from the rest of the people on the web.

The debate about that often starts at an esoteric level about the inherent knowledge and experience. It often confuses the historic pedigree of journalism with the all together more unpredictable nature of journalists. Just because journalism has been around for long time and done good things it doesn’t mean all journalists have that experience. We need to ground it more.

By: Stijn Debrouwere

Stijn Debrouwere — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:18:21 +0000

Although it’s hard not to agree that unique skills and ways of producing news are becoming more important than ever, I don’t think skills are necessarily all people will pay for or where all the focus should be. Investigate reporters don’t think “well, I could’ve done this myself, why am I paying for this?” when they’re reading a newspaper. People like link journalism and digests not because they can’t find the news themselves, but because they love a quirky selection made by someone who is, well, not them. And if you really care about a topic, you don’t care how well it’s presented to you, you just want to read all you can.

Skills may be what can set one newspaper apart from another, and the unique content that that leads to is essential if you want people to pay for what you do, but that’s really only part of the equation, methinks.